2007 Metcalf Cup & Prize

Jeffrey F. Beatty

When Hamlet wishes to expose his stepfather’s perfidy, he sets a theatrical trap. Resolving to expose his father’s murderer, Hamlet directs a troupe of actors to reconstruct the crime, hoping his play will “catch the conscience of the King.” As guilty Claudius storms from the room, art reveals what “the corrupt currents of this world” conceal.

Students in Professor Beatty’s courses on business and law remember his captivating performances drawn from the daily dramas of corporations and courtrooms. Embellishing his Friday afternoon classes with video clips, documentaries, and sparkling debates on corporate corruption, slumlords, and car loans, Professor Beatty whisks students through three hours that one student says “always left me excited and astonished at what I had learned.” One day Beatty recruited a student to propose to the class a shady business plan. “The scene was so well staged that the class believed it to be real,” a student recalls, until Professor Beatty exposed the simulation and revealed the project’s flaws.

Professor Beatty’s students praise him for being accessible and inspiring. Disregarding formal office hours, Beatty is always willing to advise on graduate applications, navigate visa requirements, or help students prepare for exams. Students competing in the annual Case Analysis Competition, the “Beanpot” of Boston’s business schools, rely on Professor Beatty to coach with the passion of Jack Parker and the shrewdness of Jack Welch. As the determined but fair chair of his School’s Committee on Academic Conduct, Professor Beatty has won his colleague’s admiration as “the Sir Edward Coke of SMG.”

Professor Beatty has written several best-selling books on business law, and he has designed courses on topics from real estate to Winston Churchill. Accounting for his creativity, Professor Beatty modestly notes that “…change is essential…Law evolves daily, the student population alters annually…A professor must forever push towards the redrawn frontier.”

With deep gratitude to a professor who excels in his many roles, determined to “show virtue her own feature” in every part he plays, Boston University proudly grants Professor Jeffrey Beatty the Metcalf Cup and Prize for Excellence in Teaching.